LOS ANGELES — Disney’s $500 million purchase of YouTube video producer Maker Studios is a sign that the entertainment industry’s content and technology startups are as valuable to Hollywood as app makers are to the giants of Silicon Valley.

The deal, announced this week, also signals Hollywood’s new openness to technological innovation, an acknowledgment that media giants don’t have all the answers. The acquisition comes a month after The Walt Disney Co. launched Disney Accelerator, a technology startup incubator that seeds 10 companies with $120,000 each to develop big-impact ideas.

Disney’s purchase price — which could hit $950 million if Maker hits performance targets — also validates the increasing value of so-called “multichannel networks.” Those are the mini media empires that provide funding and support to video creators while taking a cut of ad revenue generated from views on YouTube.

Only a handful of such networks have reached the size of Maker, which went from startup status in 2009 to a network with 55,000 channels that generate 5.5 billion views a month, the vast majority from people ages 13-34.

“I think the big media companies just have a hard time being nimble on their own,” says Gerry Laybourne, chairman of Defy Media.

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